Indian government wants to boost development of local mobile operating system

The Indian government is considering a policy to stimulate the development of its own mobile operating system. According to the Indian minister of IT, the market benefits from a third player as an alternative to Android and iOS.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India’s IT minister, said in a new policy statement that his ministry is in talks with various parties to explore how the policy can stimulate the development of its own Indian operating system and, according to The Register, the ministry is mainly looking at the towards start-ups and academics to get this job done.

Chandrasekhar says that if there is a lot of potential, his ministry will show “a lot of interest” in formulating favorable policies to help develop an Indian alternative to iOS and Android.

India is not the first country to think about its own operating system. China has been on this front for some time, with the development of Kylin. This is an Ubuntu variant that was developed in collaboration with the Chinese government and serves as a reference platform for an ‘official OS’. The Russian government also has its own operating system called Astra Linux. This OS is mainly used in Russian military departments.